Time spent travelling on employer’s minibus to and from place of work is not ‘time work’
The facts:
In Taylors Service Ltd v Commissioners for HM Revenue and Customs [2024] EAT 102, HMRC issued the respondent (a company providing labour to poultry farms around the country) with a notice of underpayment of the national minimum wage because it did not pay its workers on zero hours contracts for time spent travelling on its minibuses from their home addresses to and from farms. The respondent appealed, first to the employment tribunal which dismissed the appeal, and then to the EAT.
The legal detail:
Regulation 34 is referenced in the ruling in the context of defining what constitutes 'time work' for workers. It specifies that certain hours, which might otherwise not be considered as 'time work', should be treated as such under specific circumstances outlined in the regulations. This includes hours during which a worker is required to be available at or near a place of work, as well as certain rest breaks that are treated as hours of time work according to Regulation 34
The ruling:
The EAT allowing the appeal. holding that:
• the approach taken by the Supreme Court in Royal Mencap Society v Tomlinson-Blake [2021] IRLR 466 to the interpretation of the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 (NMW 2015), SI 2015/621, regs 30 and 32 also applies to regs 30 and 34 and, accordingly, time spent ‘just’ travelling is not ‘time work’ for the purposes of reg 30 unless it is deemed to be such by reg 34
• as the tribunal in this case had found that the workers were not working in the ordinary sense when on the minibus, and were not deemed to be engaged in time work by virtue of reg 34, the only conclusion open to the tribunal on the facts as it found them to be was that the workers were not engaged in ‘time work’ for the purposes of NMW 2015, SI 2015/621, reg 30
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